Study on fake news

A study pub­lished in 2017 by Stan­ford Univer­sity re­searchers also brought the is­sue into fo­cus. It warned that stu­dents from school to col­lege were “eas­ily duped” and ille­quipped to use rea­son with on­line in­for­ma­tion. The re­searchers warned that “democ­racy is threat­ened by the ease at which dis­in­for­ma­tion about al­most ev­ery­thing is al­lowed to spread and flour­ish.”

On 26 March 2018 the Malaysian gov­ern­ment pro­posed a fake news law which would carry a max­i­mum 10-year jail term, in­clud­ing for ar­ti­cles pub­lished abroad, spark­ing fears of a crack­down on dis­sent.

The bill in­cludes a fine up to 500,000 ring­git ($130,000) for any­one guilty of cre­at­ing or dis­sem­i­nat­ing what au­thor­i­ties deem to be fake news.

We also need to take into ac­count the po­ten­tial for harm from such fake news. Al­low­ing gov­ern­ments to de­ter­mine what is or isn’t fake news and to pun­ish the er­rant jour­nal­ists has ob­vi­ous risks. It would be­come all too easy for gov­ern­ments to muz­zle the me­dia by us­ing this stick as a threat. It must, there­fore, be left to reg­u­la­tors that are au­ton­o­mous of the gov­ern­ment — Press

Coun­cil of In­dia or the Na­tional Broad­cast­ing As­so­ci­a­tion. For sec­tions of me­dia that don’t have such reg­u­la­tors, they’ll need to put in place.

A study pub­lished in 2017 by Stan­ford

Univer­sity re­searchers also brought the is­sue into fo­cus. It warned that stu­dents from school to col­lege were “eas­ily duped” and ill-equipped to use rea­son with on­line in­for­ma­tion. The re­searchers warned that “democ­racy is threat­ened by the ease at which dis­in­for­ma­tion about al­most ev­ery­thing is al­lowed to spread and flour­ish.”

Va­sund­hara Raje gov­ern­ment passed an or­di­nance to curb me­dia from in­ves­ti­gat­ing public ser­vants.